Skoda Fabia PAS problems

The Skoda Fabia is apparently renowned for developing power steering problems and mine sprung a leak in the steering rack about a month ago. I'm going to replace the rack with one from a scrap car, but decided to clean up the pump in the process. I'm also going to replace the anti-roll bar bushings (I bought the bushings about a year ago and never fitted them) because both jobs involve dropping the front subframe.

Of course one of the track rod ends couldn't be easily removed and I needed to resort to the trusty nut-splitter and now one of the ARB drop links is up to the same trick. I've sprayed easing oil round it, but the problem with both these parts is that you need to use an Allen key to keep them from moving while you undo the bolt and after 10 years in a car that can be almost impossible.

This is the power steering pump removed from the car. As can be seen, the plastic cover and foam jacket have pretty much disintegrated. The foam was soaking and was the cause of the corrosion on the pump housing. This apparently was to reduce vibration and noise, but in later cars was abandoned. You can see why.

With the bracket removed I was able to give the housing a bit of a wire brush and a coating with a waterproofing spray. Hopefully the pump is okay because it is an expensive thing to replace although an easy enough job to do. The biggest headache is that when it is in the car the access to the green filler is only possible with the battery and tray completely removed.

I'm seriously tempted to modify this thing to put a remote filler pipe onto it that could be fed up into the engine bay and capped off carefully. I have some 10mm plastic hose and fittings kicking around and it would be easy enough to epoxy a pipe into the side of the plastic reservoir.